Conquering Angels Landing Trail in Zion National Park (Utah)

The Angels Landing Trail is the most spectacular and most popular hiking trail in Zion National Park. But before deciding if you want to do it or not you have to answer two questions:

Are you afraid of heights or not?

If you do it is probably better to stick to less demanding trails. The last stretch of the trail is pretty nerve-racking when you climb along the narrow ridge with the one-mile abyss on the one side and half a mile void on another. It is beautiful but scary sometimes.

My wife is afraid of heights and there is absolutely no way she could complete this hike.

I have visited Zion previously, knew what to expect and had all the facts about the trail.

Below is the 100% crop of the area of the Angel Landing trail.

Second question: Are you comfortable waking up at 5am?

The Zion National Park is one of the busiest parks in the Southwest because of the proximity to Las Vegas and it is a popular destination for day tours from Sin City. And pretty much everybody wants to do Angels Landing.

If you decide to do the trail in the middle of the day between April and October you will not enjoy it. It looks like Times Square on New Year’s eve. The only way to enjoy it is to wake up at 5am, take the very first shuttle bus to the bottom of the trail. At this time of the day, you will hardly see any people.

Angels Landing Trail Info

Distance: 5-miles
Average Hiking Time: 5 hours
Difficulty: Strenuous uphill hike.
Sun Exposure: Full sun
Trail Usage: Heavy
Map: Download the Zion National Park Hiking Map

Since the average person does not hike with a tripod and does not stop every 100 meters to take photos, I estimated the average travel photographer hiking time to somewhere between 7 to 8 hours.

I also knew that late morning and early afternoon hours in Zion could be very crowded and, in general, I am not very fond of people in my landscapes. Instead of unapologetically removing them from my reality in Photoshop, I decided to beat the crowd and start the hike as early as possible.

I was on the very first park’s shuttle bus in the early morning as I started my hike in a very comfortable cool temperature with absolutely no people around.

In the beginning, it was a steep but very comfortable hike, with amazing open views and plenty of room to setup a tripod.

The last half-mile of the Angels Landing hike became a bit extreme. I had to pack my tripod and climb with the camera hanging around my neck. That was the moment when I really appreciated the switch from DSLR to mirrorless.

For some reason, the hiking down was less uncomfortable than going up.